BAA111 - People & Organisations: Persuasive Essay on Empowerment

This essay explores the significance of employee empowerment in contemporary business environments, emphasizing its importance for quick decision-making, enhanced team performance, and improved employee motivation. It defines empowerment as granting authority and autonomy to employees, highlighting its positive impact on customer satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. The essay examines the benefits, such as fostering talent development, facilitating consultative decision-making, and boosting creativity and job satisfaction. It also addresses criticisms, including potential coordination problems and conflicts of interest. The essay suggests solutions like defining clear policies, establishing stringent disciplinary actions, and promoting effective communication. It concludes that employee empowerment is crucial for thriving in today's dynamic business landscape.

PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS
PERSUASIVE ESSAY

Introduction
In the contemporary business environment driven by the complex business operations and the
enhanced competition, employees are rightly stated to be the key assets of an entity. This is
because all of the organisational functions are dependent on the efficiency of the employees
(Dobre, 2013). There has been an ongoing debate over the years, as to what degree of
autonomy should be allowed to the employees of the organisations. The following work is
supportive of the view point that in order to get the most out of the teams, empowerment is
the key. The following work would present the supportive facts in context of the viewpoint
mentioned above. In addition, a glimpse of the counter arguments would also be presented, to
finally conclude that the counter arguments are not significant enough and the empowerment
of the teams is the prime necessity of modern business environment.
Significance of the empowerment of the teams
Empowerment refers to the authority and the autonomy to act. In the business context, the
empowerment of the teams is referred to as the freeing the employees to remove the barriers
in the job roles, in context of certain decision making powers (Manzoor, 2012). In terms of
the behavioural aspects, the empowerment of the teams is referred to as the distribution of
power from high levels to low levels. The chief benefit of the said empowerment is the quick
decisions and problem solutions in the event of the changes in the business environment
(Hanaysha, 2016). This is because the employees do not waste time on referring a problem to
a senior manager, rather are able to address the challenges soon. The same is especially
beneficial in the events when the problems are related to the customers. Handling the
customer feedbacks and issues not only leads to the timely solution of the problems, but also
leads to building the base of the satisfied customers, which is vital for the competitive
businesses of today.
It has been rightly stated that distribution of power and control enhances organizational
effectiveness. The significance of empowering the teams further lies in fact that while the
authority and decision making is delegated, the lower level managers in a group are
facilitated to alter production schedules, develop or modify work assignments, can take
disciplinary actions and in addition recommend the promotion of their subordinates. This
facilitates the senior management in concentrating on the core strategic policies of the
company and decision at higher levels, because teams are more efficiently managed (Elnaga

and Imran, 2014). The control can be exercised adequately at different levels of enterprise as
well. Thus, empowering the employees of the enterprise aids the organisation in terms of
diversification and sharing of the burdens and responsibilities. The sharing of the
responsibilities also aid in the better fixation of the accountability among the junior managers
as well as the better fixation of the targets of a team or a department.
In addition to the above benefits, the yet another key benefit of empowerment of the teams is
that when the employees are empowered with some extent of authority, the same enhances
their decision-making skills. It is a well-known fact that the growth of the company is greatly
dependent on the talented executives as well. In addition, it would be right to state that hiring
new experienced staff can stress on the financial resources of the enterprise. While working
for an organisation, one way of developing the talent of the junior executives is by providing
them the opportunity of taking initiatives to face the various business challenges (Amah and
Ahiauzu, 2013). This makes them ready for managerial positions in future and therefore the
enterprise does not have to be dependent on the outside sources to hire the talented
individuals during bigger business opportunities. The team empowerment is also employed in
the form of consultative decision-making processes in some of the organisations and in
relation to the matter of higher strategic importance in which the leaders invite the ideas and
employees of the employee. This way, not only the employees feel involved in the decision-
making processes, but the said approach is quite effective specially in the events of changes
and the introduction of the new policies of the entity. A lesser resistance from the employees
is observed from the implementation of the said employee empowerment approach.
It has been often stated that in certain types of organizational environment where the
employees are suppressed, there is a hindrance in the innovativeness and the motivation
levels which has a direct negative impact on the overall organizational growth, performance,
and effectiveness. The yet another benefit in terms of the cognitive aspect is that the
decentralization facilitates the motivation among the employees and enhances the job
satisfaction (Sahoo and Das, 2011). This is due to the achievement of various individual
requirements of participation in the organisational decision-making, independence and status
in the group, along with the cohesiveness and group spirit. It has been rightly stated that
empowerment leads to making sense of belonging and pride in the workforce of an
organisation.

It is efficient to note that employee empowerment and participation is comprised of the
contribution of employees in administration and decision making processes, that are
associated to key strategies, policies, and objectives of the organization. Further, in favour of
the allowance of empowerment, it can be stated that the same allows instilling the creativity
in the working culture of the organisation (Muogbo, 2013). The creativity further allows to
create a healthy competition within the entity. The enhancement of the job satisfaction and
motivation levels of the employees is beneficial for the enterprise as well as the employee
retention ratio would improve.
Criticism of empowerment of employees
However, there is a slice of criticism in empowerment of teams as well, which is elaborated
as follows. As substantial autonomy is provided to the individuals, there can arise problems
of coordination for the entity as well. As the authorities are dispersed within an organisation,
there may be an absence of coherency between the instructions and policies of different
teams, as each team would be led by different individual possessing different experiences and
values. The yet another disadvantage that may arise from the empowerment of employees in
terms of authority is the failure to abide by the uniform set of policies and standardised
procedures. Thus, individual teams working styles and policies may fail to be in line with the
organisational objectives. The disadvantage can be further be listed as that there may arise
conflict of interest among the employees in context of the individual interests and the
company interests (Taneja, Sewell and Odom, 2015). As the employees are granted power to
make decision with respect to entering into a contract, or utilisation of funds; the same may
be misused for the personal benefits.
Means to effectively implement the empowerment of employees
Thus, the previous section states the potential problems that can arise in the event of
empowering the employees of an entity. However, the stated issues can be addressed by an
entity by following the below mentioned disciplinary procedures. One of the greatest
challenges in the empowerment is the absence of coordination. The activities and
responsibilities can be defined among the individuals with the aid of the policy documents.
All the employees including the leaders must abide by the same to avoid confusion. The
policy document should clearly state the organisational objectives, job roles and the
empowerment must be granted in accordance with the qualification and work experience to
make it more a joint effort for the enterprise as a whole. Further, the coordination and work

flow can be further enhanced with better communication among the teams. The entity should
organise inter team training workshops, group discussions and joint work sessions to avoid
the problems in the coordination among the leaders as well as the teams as a whole. The
conflict of interests in the empowerment can be further tackled by the definition of strict
disciplinary actions that must be taken if the employees engage in the misuse of the
authorities.
Conclusion
The discussions in the previous segments aid to conclude that empowerment of the
employees is a prime necessity of today’s dynamic business environment. This is because of
the ever changing business needs and the requirement of quick and coordinated decision
making to address the same. The work additionally highlights the significance of
empowerment on the individual level for the employees in terms of the motivation,
development of the managerial skills, which leads to creativity in the overall management of
the enterprise. However, there are some challenges as well in the team empowerment in
context of coordination, conflict of interest, and shift from the organisational policies as
highlighted in the work. Additionally the means to address the above challenges have been
studied such as defining the policy document, stringent disciplinary framework and trainings;
that can aid in reaping maximum benefits from the empowering the employees of an entity.

References
Dobre, O. I. (2013) Employee motivation and organizational performance. Review of applied
socio-economic research, 5(1).
Manzoor, Q. A. (2012) Impact of employees motivation on organizational
effectiveness. Business management and strategy, 3(1), pp. 1-12.
Hanaysha, J. (2016) Examining the effects of employee empowerment, teamwork, and
employee training on organizational commitment. Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 229, pp. 298-306.
Elnaga, A. A., and Imran, A. (2014) The impact of employee empowerment on job
satisfaction: theoretical study. American Journal of Research Communication, 2(1), pp. 13-
26.
Amah, E., and Ahiauzu, A. (2013) Employee involvement and organizational
effectiveness. Journal of Management Development, 32(7), pp. 661-674.
Sahoo, C. K., and Das, S. (2011) Employee empowerment: A strategy towards workplace
commitment. European journal of business and management, 3(11), pp. 46-55.
Muogbo, U. S. (2013) The impact of employee motivation on organisational performance (a
study of some selected firms in anambra state nigeria). The international journal of
engineering and science, 2(7), pp. 70-80.
Taneja, S., Sewell, S. S., and Odom, R. Y. (2015) A culture of employee engagement: A
strategic perspective for global managers. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(3), pp. 46-56.